Samurai Warriors 3 Going To War In Europe This May

Earlier in the week, Nintendo announced out of the blue that they were publishing Koei’s Samurai Warriors 3 with an added online co-op feature in the western market. While it’s certainly a most noble undertaking and we’re happy for Koei, a quick look at the release dates for North America and Europe might trigger a few raised eyebrows.

In the U.S., Nintendo of America will be releasing the title sometime this fall. Usually, this would be a smart decision, given that well-known brands of Nintendo systems tend to sell well during the holidays. Samurai Warriors, however, is practically unheard of outside its niche, and one doubts that simply having the Nintendo brand on the cover is likely to help it stand out amidst the generally oversaturated Fall rush of games.

In Europe, the game is being published on May 28th — squished between Sin & Punishment 2 (May 7th) and Super Mario Galaxy 2. (June 11th).

Given the company’s perceived apathy toward promoting their non-evergreen brands, this highlights an interesting potential disconnect: namely, NCL’s desire to support a well-developed third-party effort conflicting with NOA and NOE’s apparent indifference toward the same game. Of course, without being aware of the details of NCL’s deal with Koei, this is but mere speculation.

I seriously doubt S&P2 can be considered a blockbuster, or even a big release for that matter.

That said, NOA and NOE have a record of pushing games out without giving them as much as a single tv spot, so it wouldn’t surprise me if SW3 met the same fate.

Artavasdus

Yeah, the lack of marketing efforts from NoA and NoE is quite bizarre. That said, even in Japan Nintendo sent many games to die killing them off with unpublicized releases, small distributions and so on. Takt of Magic’s LTD 5k sales comes to mind, for example.

malek86

You’re right, I should have added NOJ to the list.

It’s almost as if they thought “if it’s not Mario, it’s not our concern whether it sells or not”.

Honestly, I only added that remark because I felt my entire post would come off as incredibly arrogant otherwise. I don’t think this is stretching it at all. Iwata has remarked numerous times that he intends to push third-party relations, and this obviously a part of that initiative.

Now, whether NOA and NOE even know what to do with a game of this sort is another matter entirely…